Episode 56 – Working remotely overseas and loving it – with David Gatti

Our guest in this episode is a jet-setting remote developer David Gatti. David appeared on the show as part of a panel back in episode 31. Now he’s back and he has something special to share. David works as a remote software developer from outside the US and he is here in episode 56 to tell us all about it. Listen in to find out if doing remote software development is right for you.
 
Say hello to David on Twitter!
 
David Gatti’s Bio:
David Gatti began his career in IT as a Systems Administrator. He learned how to code in PHP out of boredom, and made some simple internal tools to help him while managing the company network.
He then became a blogger and wrote about mobile technologies before the iPhone came into existence and PDAs had cellular modems. He also wrote the CMS for the website itself when WordPress was first starting. Then he began working as a web developer for a company that did simple Facebook games.
After this initial experience, he imported a Windows Mobile app to Android 2.3. He later became a Brand Manager for a mobile game company and a Marketing Director for another company, and at that company – he transitioned to Developer Relations Manager and worked for two companies with this title. It was a job that he fell in love with.
But, while hunting for his next opportunity, he struggled to find the right company. Out of frustration, he created Simpe.li (simply) so he could keep doing what he does best – Development Relations Management done right.
Episode Highlights and Show Notes:
Arsalan: Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Mentoring Developers. In this episode I’ll be talking to David Gatti. David, how are you?
David: I’m good. How are you?
Arsalan: I’m great. You have been on the show before in discussion. So I know quite a lot about you, but my audience who is listening right now doesn’t know a lot about who David got today is. So, describe yourself a little.
David: so, I’m a human, born on earth. More precisely, though, I’m a software developer and project manager for two different companies. I was born in Sweden and then I moved to Italy, where I was raised. Then I look for a long time in Poland. When I became a little older I decided to start traveling the world. I ended up in China and Southeast Asia, so, China, Singapore and Bali. In Bali I stayed for about 10 months before I moved for a short bit to the states and then back to Poland. So, I’ve been a little bit of everywhere.
David: I became a software developer and at one point I became a blogger for four years. At that time I was working on the site itself. At that time WordPress was still starting out with version 1, if that tells you how long it was. I was building the whole website by myself because at the time WordPress wasn’t a thing. It was just starting. After that I became a web developer and then I took a break and became a brand manager. After failing with the blog website, I had to close it and go back to becoming a web developer.
David: I became very passionate in understanding why a company fails. As a result of that, I read a lot of books and different articles and even watch different movies about the topic. I became a brand manager because of that. I worked in the software development company where they were working on a lot of games. It was fun, but I eventually came back to just software development because I didn’t like the office politics within a company.
David: As a software developer, you can just sit down and do whatever you have to do. You punch the keyboard and cool stuff ends up at the other end. I also missed just being a developer. I became a project manager for one company because this allowed me to understand how to work with other developers.

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